"Catherine, it's hard to grasp the carnage your book describes in Rwanda. Didn't both the Hutus and the Tutsis have some form of the Christian faith in their cultural heritage?"
"Yes, they did. It seems, though, that at some point, the Christian story came to shape people's experience less than their Hutu or Tutsi story did. When your tribe's story becomes more important than Jesus', your opponent stops being the-enemy-Jesus-tells-me-to-love and becomes the-thing-that-threatens-my-way-of-life. Then the killing begins.”
Catherine Claire Larson's answer in an exchange over her book As We Forgive gave me pause ... then a couple of days later I discovered that Time magazine has discovered Calvinism (I know not everybody at commongrounds is a self-described Calvinist, but many of us are, including me).
Evidently, "The New Calvinism" is No. 3 among the "ideas changing the world" -- and is muscling its way past other Christian voices largely by virtue of the bite of its austerely demanding God.
"Holy Misdirection, Batman!" I can't imagine a more seductive invitation to abandon the Christian story for a tribal narrative than to start assessing whether our tribe is high enough on the list of cultural influence.
Personally, I agree that the answer to the profound brokenness and temptation that so many grow up with now is neither better therapy nor more friends, but God. I also agree that when you try to define God in the Bible's terms, you find theologians of John Calvin's sort to be superior guides.
I also am quite certain (though the Time article doesn't discuss this matter) that the economic woes we find ourselves in is a direct function of the loss of the self-restraint their Calvinism taught our forbears (see my own blog "Paul on Civic Virtue ... and Your Credit Card Debt").
But staying under the sway of the big God who through his Son is narrating to the cosmos its one true story of creation, fall, incarnation, reclamation -- that is the point. Trying to gauge where we are on the chart of influence -- and whether it's, say, pungency or affability that is more likely to move us ahead of other tribal voices -- is off task.
Lest the killing begin, thanks, Time, but no thanks.
--------- ----------
Editor's Note: a friend emailed me with this link from the same magazine, Time, sixty years before. From February 24, 1947, "Calvinist Comeback"?
Calvinism was once virtually the American Faith. It came to New England with the Puritans, to New York with the Dutch Reformed, to Pennsylvania with the German Reformed. And wherever Scottish Presbyterians went in the U.S., predestination, 90-minute sermons, and the "Shorter Catechism" went with them.
But the faith of ascetic, heretic-burning John Calvin was stern, hard and alien to a boisterous young country in a nature-taming age. Calvinism insisted on 1) the total depravity of man, 2) a God who, for His own good reasons, irrevocably divided all mankind into the Elect and the Damned, 3) strict "blue laws."-
Is Calvinism's stern faith on its way back—as a reaction against the emotional confusions of war, inflation and the atomic age? Sure of it, Professor Clarence Bouma, of Michigan's Calvin Seminary, writes in the current Journal of Religion:
". . . The once dominant and self-confident liberalism speaks a different language today. Horton and Van Dusen, Tillich and Niebuhr, Fosdick and Morrison—it scarcely makes a difference to whom you turn. All speak in the same apologetic strain, even though a few try to cover their retreat. . . .
"These liberals no longer speak of the perfectibility of man. . . . Whereas we used to hear of the glory, the progress, and the greatness of man, we now hear of his 'fate' and his 'predicament.'. . . What has all this to do with a possible revival of Calvinism?
"First of all, this new temper is a vindication—whatever the intent of the liberals—of the Pauline-Augustinian-Calvinistic view of human nature. . . .
"The message of Calvinism to modern man is that he must repent from his idolatry, which is his greatest and root sin. His idolatry, in that he has made a God of himself and made a problem of the living God of the Scriptures. . . .
"We have had enough religion, religious philosophy and religious psychology. It is time we again found the living God and began to build the theological temple. . . .
"Let theology be theology! We have made everything of it except just that. Theology is the coherent, systematic study of God and divine things. . . . Somehow modern theology will have to find the road back to the God of the Scriptures, the God of whom Pascal in his spiritual autobiography is reported to have exclaimed in the night of his conversion: 'God! the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob! The God of Jesus Christ! Not the God of the philosophers and the scholars!'':
*In Geneva under Calvin (1541-64), joking and absence from
sermons were crimes.
To read a really thoughtful reflection on which stories are shaping us, take a look at Emmanuel Katongole's Mirror to the Church. He asks us to think about where in our experience is the blood of "tribalism" stronger than the waters of baptism? If you think of tribalism in a loose sense of the word, you see what an important question that is. When push comes to shove, what is the story we default to? If it is some other cultural story, or some other ties, we are on dangerous ground. Thanks for these reflections, Reggie.
Posted by: Catherine Larson | March 20, 2009 at 10:25 AM
Wow, that Editor's Note is nuts. I'd never have imagined that.
I'm mixed about stuff like this. On the one hand, I don't want to be an elitist who treats my tribal leaders like they're cults of personality. On the other hand, I *love* that messages from folks like Driscoll, Piper, and Mohler are widespread enough to get Time's attention. I'd be lying if I denied that I was pumped to see them get publicity in Time Mag.
Great corrective. Thanks, Dr. Kidd.
Posted by: Alex Sims | March 23, 2009 at 11:48 AM
Reggie,
I am as dubious of the myth of cultural influence as anyone. But is Calvinism a tribe that threatens to distract us from the Christian story or is it the best way to tell the Christian story?
Cornelius Van Til's response to the 1947 Time article on resurgent Calvinism may offer an answer to that question. He urged readers to distinguish between historic Calvinism and its modern substitutes. It is the latter, whether one follows Niebuhr in 1947 or Driscoll/Piper in 2009, that seems particularly vulnerable to tribalism.
Posted by: John Muether | March 27, 2009 at 08:24 AM
Calvinism could become a tribe if it were to become more enamored with its superiority at telling the Christian story than with the Christian story itself. Calvinism could become a tribe if it contemplated voting Driscoll/Piper off the island.
That said, huzzah for CVT's trying to distinguish between belief and genuine error in his day. May we be discerning in our own.
BTW, huzzah too to you, John, for seeking to keep his voice alive.
Posted by: Reggie Kidd | March 27, 2009 at 09:35 AM
My main concern is that we not let fear of tribalism keep us from telling the story as best we can. Recently Mark Dever has described infant baptism as a sin. I admire him for being willing to put the matter that strongly. Of course, he is completely wrong. But his error is not tribalism. JM
Well said, JM. Thx. RK
Posted by: John Muether | March 27, 2009 at 11:55 AM